The Gaslighting Mess America Has Created

Stuart Kyle Duncan (born 1972) was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by President Donald J. Trump in 2017 and confirmed by the United States Senate in 2018.

Judge Duncan received his B.A. from Louisiana State University in 1994, his J.D. from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1997 and his LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 2004.

Without delay, “The Washington Blade,” America’s self-described LGBTQ news source, promptly manifested its penchant for unconditional partiality: “Anti-LGBT Trump judicial nominee Kyle Duncan confirmed to Fifth Circuit. [Duncan] made a major component of his career as a lawyer blocking LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage and transgender student Gavin Grimm’s access to the high school boys’ restroom consistent with his gender identity.”

Gavin Grimm is a female, but as a freshman in high school she transgendered as male and forced herself into the boy’s restroom in Virginia. Altering her physical form by means of masculinizing hormone “therapy” and undergoing reconstructive breast ablation, Grimm then received an official Virginia state I.D. card supplementing her Virginia birth certificate, listing her gender as male.

Modern America finds itself in a perpetual state of gaslighting, aided and abetted by secularism’s propagandists, proselytizers and unwavering zealots lording over the nation’s spiritual, intellectual, educational, economic and vocational levers of power and influence.

Take for example Lia Thomas, the biological male swimmer. After competing for three years on the Penn men’s swim team, Thomas declared himself to be female and joined the women’s squad for the 2021-2022 season. Under the pretense of being female, the delusive lad won the 500-yard freestyle Women’s NCAA Division I National Championship, without the least sign of shame or any sting of conscience.

Should we anticipate a mandate from the federal government, in its alleged eagerness to root out any “misinformation,” that we are to go along with the make-believe without a word?

This brings us to Thursday, March 9, 2023, when Judge Duncan was scheduled to speak to the Federalist Society at the Stanford School of Law. He was met by 100 puffy protestors who continually interrupted him as he tried to deliver a lecture entitled, The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: COVID, Guns and Twitter.

When Judge Duncan asked for an administrator to intervene, he received a six-minute vituperative tirade by Tirien Steinbach, Stanford’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

On March 17, the Wall Street Journal featured a guest commentary by Judge Duncan under the title “My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School,” with as subtitle: ‘A dean voices pride that students are being taught to stage tantrums rather than make a reasoned case.’ He wrote:

“The most disturbing aspect of this shameful debacle is what it says about the state of legal education. Stanford is an elite law school. The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion. That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker. Worst of all, Ms. Steinbach’s remarks made clear she is proud that Stanford students are being taught this is the way law should be.”

Establishing standards, maintaining order, resolving disputes, and protecting liberties and rights are no longer the meaning and purpose of American elite law schools; empowerment and DEI are now a higher law.

Whereas Verbum Dei is Latin for the Word of God, the deceptively named acronym DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) stands for quite the opposite.

The incident at the Stanford School of Law wasn’t a scene from Star Wars, but closely resembles the account from Sodom found in Genesis 19:4-9: “But before they retired for the night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, came from all over the city and surrounded the house. They shouted to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to spend the night with you? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!’

“So Lot stepped outside to talk to them, shutting the door behind him. ‘Please, my brothers,’ he begged, ‘don’t do such a wicked thing. Look, I have two virgin daughters. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do with them as you wish. But please, leave these men alone, for they are my guests and are under my protection.’

“‘Stand back!’ they shouted. ‘This fellow [Lot] came to town as an outsider, and now he’s acting like our judge! We’ll treat you far worse than those other men!’ And they lunged toward Lot to break down the door.”

Much like Sodom, contemporary American education engages unreservedly in grooming the next generation for immorality and sexual perversion. Pursuing excessive indulgence of lust and animalism gets now the highest grades in public education.

Let’s also not forget that in Obergefell v. Hodges—the legalization of same-sex marriage by the United States Supreme Court in 2015—five rogue Justices did not establish some “harmless triviality but rather a perversion of truth that makes good evil and evil good (Isa. 5:20).”

Homosexuality has transformed itself over the last two generations into a self-proclaimed moral good, a paragon of secular “dei”, holding the Bible and once Christian America in submission with its 5-4 majority edicts of what its secular deacons and divas can agree upon any given day. Their blessing of homosexuality as a “civil rights” rewards the sinful and punishes the righteous.

But praise be to Jehovah God, for “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. But He does not always, nor generally, act immediately when we are brought low. No, he ‘waits to be gracious’ (Isa. 30:18), that our helplessness may be the more fully realized, that His delivering hand may be seen the more clearly, and that His merciful interposition may be the more appreciated.”

At just the right time, when we are still powerless (Rom. 5:6), Gideon’s and Rahab’s are beginning to enter the public arena. {eoa}

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David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.